


If You're Dreaming, Are You Dreaming of Me?

by orphan_account



Series: The Dreams 'Verse [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Black Romance, F/M, M/M, Mentioned Gamrezi, Mentioned Latula/Karkat, One-Sided Karezi, One-Sided Relationship, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Red Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 23:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kankri comforts Karkat after he finds out about Terezi and Gamzee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You're Dreaming, Are You Dreaming of Me?

**Author's Note:**

> Because Kankri and Karkat are more similar than Karkat expects, and because I think that underneath all of his preachy social justice, Kankri really does care about Karkat.

You shouldn’t be here.

That’s the first thought in your mind when you step into the back room of the meteor and find Terezi straddling Gamzee’s lap, right next to the horn pile.

You dart away from the doorway. You press your back against the cold wall, just outside.

They didn’t see you. They didn’t notice you walking in.

They seemed to be having a private moment.

Your heart does something you wish it wouldn’t.

It starts to hurt. It starts to sink in your chest.

She won’t talk to you. She hasn’t talked to you in what feels like a whole sweep, and you miss her. For some reason now she’s talking to him, and you don’t know what about, but you didn’t even know that they were on speaking terms.

Last time you checked Terezi hated Gamzee.

Last time you checked Gamzee hardly even cared that Terezi existed.

You can hear the faint, familiar raspiness of her voice as she speaks to him, but you can’t make out what she’s saying. Gamzee doesn’t sound like he’s saying much of anything, but you think you can hear him breathing. Then suddenly, you hear their bodies shifting, hear nails clicking and scratching against the tile. Then you hear a deep, low growl, and you just know it’s Gamzee, and then all of a sudden the horn pile SQUEAKS and Terezi groans, slow, long and pleased.

You stiffen. Your heart skips a beat.

She groans again, and you quickly hear the sound of clothing being grappled with. Fabric tears, buttons jingle, and zippers unfasten, and your throat tightens and closes as you try to swallow hard.

Your heart pounds.

“Mother— _fuck_.”

Gamzee’s voice is strangled.

The horn pile squeaks several times and you hear errant horns tumble down to the floor, as if they’re being climbed. Terezi lets out a sharp pitched cry, and it immediately sends a shock wave down your spine, a stir in the direction of your groin.

You close your eyes. Your legs feel heavy. You should move, you should leave, you shouldn’t be here, but for some reason you can’t walk away. You’re stuck. The pain in your chest only deepens as you hear the horn pile begin to bounce and squeak at a consistent pace, as you hear her whine and hear him grunt and oh god this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening—

Gamzee starts to hack and cough. It sounds like he’s  _choking,_ Terezi must be choking him, and you don’t know what stings more, the fact that he’s being hurt or the fact that it’s her who’s hurting him. Your stomach twists and coils, and the squeaks just get louder, and faster, and louder, and faster, and so does the tangled sound they make when they breathe, heavy and bated and intimate. Terezi moans all wild and unabashed, echoing off the walls, and you think you’re going to be sick as you feel your bulge beginning to tighten and unsheathe itself beneath your jeans.

You hear a harsh  _slap_ of skin, and that’s it. You’re done.

You’re suddenly power walking, or damn near running, and you really need to get out of here.

You don’t know where you’re headed. You’re sweating. Your heart is doing a stellar impression of something that’s trying to thrash its way out of your tiny little chest. You stalk and stomp your feet right past Kanaya and Rose in the main room, even though they stare after you curiously, and you make your way to a darkened corner in the hall, where you can be alone.

You pace for a moment, and then you just stop.

You stare at a blank space on the wall. Your heartbeat thumps so hard that you can feel it your thinkpan. Your ears burn so hot that you can swear they’re turning red, hell, that all of your body is blushing and burning and turning red.

You’re jealous of them.

You shouldn’t be jealous. There are four romance quadrants, and this is just one of them. But you are.

Gamzee and Terezi are allowed to wax black. They’re allowed to hate each other, they’re allowed to be kismesises. It’s not cheating on anybody, except maybe Dave, but who the hell cares how that ironic back talking candy-red-pajama-wearing tool feels about any of this anyway. He’s a human and he doesn’t understand.

She’s just filling her quadrants is all.

And you’re not even with her. You’re no one special. She doesn’t have feelings for you and she’s made that painfully clear.

So why do you feel like you just got stabbed in the chest?

Maybe it’s because it just seems like she’s out to fill a quadrant with everyone but you.

You two were matesprites once. You think. If it could’ve even been considered that. You were both just barely five sweeps old when you realized you were flushed for each other, and it was a primitive relationship, basically some wriggler shit. You had no idea what you were doing.

She tired of you often, you annoyed each other just as much as you flirted, and you were sending her mixed signals, so by the time the game started, you didn’t really stand anywhere with her, romantically. She soon got over you and replaced you with Dave, flirting with his miles of red text while you were on the meteor. And you just watched. You denied that you still liked her like a grubsucking idiot.

Once she and Dave met in person it was obvious they were going to be matesprites, and again, you just watched. You watched until one day you flipped the fuck out because you realized that you lost her, but arguing with Dave about still getting a shot with her was as pointless as all get out, and you hate yourself for even trying. It was stupid and so god damn embarrassing.

If you didn’t already have one, you’d be content with being her moirail. You would’ve been content with her lashing out her hatred on you as well, with her making  _those cries_  and  _those moans_ with  _you_ instead of—him. Hell you’d even be content with auspisticing between her and Gamzee at this point, if that’s what she wanted. You’d be content with being her anything.

But she doesn’t want you. She probably won’t any time soon.

And you can’t place your feelings about Gamzee into a compartment that makes any sense after what you just saw—or well, heard—him do, either. As much as part of you wants to take his ashy, painted face into your hands and scream  _“WHAT THE FUCK???”_ , you know that he’s not doing anything wrong. Sure, he knows how you feel about her, on account of your many, many feelings jams, but he’s not doing anything wrong by filling his black quad with her. She had a space to fill, and so did he. It’s only troll nature. Besides, it’s not like you told him outright, by definition, that you wanted to be her kismesis. It’s not like he cheated you, it’s not like he’s betraying you.

 _You_  can’t even determine what your feelings are for her exactly, so how was he supposed to be able to do the same?

You don’t know how long you’ve been standing in the hall, trying to work through your thoughts and calm yourself down, but right now, you wish you had Time powers. You wish you could go back in time and _not_  see them together in that room.

You wish you didn’t have to know. This was a thing that you would’ve been much, much better off not knowing.

You cross the hall and walk towards a bookshelf. You stand on your tiptoes and take as many of Rose’s thick journals as you can off of the tallest shelf and into your arms. You walk back to your corner and messily assort the books into a small pile, their rough corners and spines sticking out every which way, and you curl up on yourself in a little ball on top of them. You dig your elbows and knees around, trying to get comfortable, but nothing about this feels comfortable, so you give up.

You lie there with the edge of a book pressing into your cheek, and the huge, writhing, red globe that is your self-hatred proceeds to tell you how pathetic you are for feeling this way.

You close your eyes, your brows furrow, and when your eyes begin to sting beneath your lids you yell at yourself in your head profusely.

_Don’t cry don’t cry don’t you dare fucking cry. Do. Not. Fucking. Cry._

(♋)

When you wake up, you find yourself in a dream bubble.

You sit up. You are resting at the foot of a huge golden staircase, covered in a lavish green carpet. It is much like the one you were in the last time you visited a dream bubble.

You stand up and quickly realize the reason that you recognize this particular spot. This is the extremely unfortunate place where you got caught up in tedious, biting, longwinded lecture with your unbearable Pre-Scratch self, Kankri.

You suddenly fear the fact that you’ve woken up here, of all places. You look around frantically, hoping that he isn’t going to spring himself upon you or randomly appear.

And he does.

“There you are, Karkat. I had a feeling you were back.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you grumble under your breath, palming your face.

An alarming blotch of red wool and black skinny jeans suddenly comes traipsing down the stairs at you, with arms crossed and gray nose tilted high in the air. You wonder if smacking yourself in the head over and over will cause you to wake up, because you  _really_ aren’t in the mood for this. You are not and will never be in the mood for him.

 “We never got around to finishing our discussion last time, did we?” Kankri says to you once he’s right behind you.

You turn around to face him.

Kankri Vantas looks just like you, only taller and cleaner and slightly more attractive, and he lacks those characteristic dark under-eye circles of yours, as well as your bushy eyebrows and permanent frown lines. His hair is softer and fluffier, his eyes are ghostly white, and his hands are so smooth that you’d swear he never did a hard day of work in his entire life. You sincerely doubt he ever did.

Kankri’s passive and tremendously slow to anger as far as you can tell, two qualities that you kind of envy, not that you’d ever get a chance to cut in and tell him. As a matter of fact he seems to be a bit slow to everything, especially to the fact that  _no one_  wants to listen to him run his mouth about cisbloods and social constructs and the ten-thousand different kinds of “privilege.” Not you, not anybody.

He seems to annoy pretty much everyone he comes into contact with, and you wonder if he’s even clued in on the fact that his friends almost all of his must practically hate him.

Your self-hatred pricks at you and makes you wonder if all of your friends, dead or alive, practically hate you too.

Kankri raises his eyebrow at you now, because you’ve been quiet. He’s surprisingly quiet too at the moment, having yet to launch into mind-numbing monologue-mode. Last time, he didn’t let you utter much more than your name before he began his tirade.

But this time, he seems to be waiting on your response. He’s perceptive to you.

“Are you okay?” he asks plainly.

You frown. He’s actually asking you a question that isn’t rhetorical.

But you don’t like him, so you don’t feel like sharing.

“Yeah,” you answer, gruff. “Perfect.”

Kankri stares at you. And continues to stare at you. You have to admit that your older self’s steady gaze is making you kind of nervous. You blush, gulp, and avert your eyes.

“I can tell that something is troubling you, Karkat,” he says matter-of-factly, “I’m a Seer. And I don’t mean that to be ableist to the blind, and by no means do I intend to flaunt my abled privilege. You know, it would really help me if upon the beginnings of our discussions you would warn me about your triggers, which you still have yet to do, so that I could carefully avoid certain topics and stray away from key words that might provoke you, or bring you back to any traumatizing flashbacks or experiences.”

You don’t know what to say to that. You never know what to say around this guy. He’s completely ridiculous.

Kankri pushes up the sleeves of his puffy red sweater and then sits down, all of a sudden. He dangles his long legs off the edge of the golden platform on which you stand. He stares out into the black expanse of sky.

“Would you like to sit?” he asks, not looking at you.

You laboriously sigh.

You glance around. This dream bubble is completely empty besides the two of you. You don’t really have anywhere else to go, in dream or out of it, and besides—the sound of his aggravating voice going on and on about things you don’t think you care about is a slightly better alternative than being forced to think about your hurt feelings.

About Terezi. About Gamzee.

So you sit.

You make it a point not to sit too close to him. You keep your hands in your lap so that they don’t unambiguously brush against his or anything. You dangle your denim-covered legs over the edge just like him, noting with irritation just how much shorter yours are than his. He’s three sweeps older than you and in the back of your mind, you’re hoping that one day you grow up to be as tall as him.

“Now I realize that in the past, the conversations between you and I have been largely one-sided, as I have a lot of wisdom to give and you, as my protégé, have a lot of wisdom to absorb,” Kankri starts up again, “but I have a feeling that you’re not here because you’re looking to receive another important and fulfilling lesson. At least not yet.”

He looks over at you, and once again the whole silent-eye-contact thing just makes your blush increase.

You shrug. “Guess not,” you mutter, shifting a bit.

“I won’t force you to reveal anything to me that will make you comfortable, and please tell me if any of my language is beginning to make you feel pushed, persuaded or cornered into an unwarranted confession,” he says, “but if you so choose, I am all ears to your troubles. I only ask that you please be mindful of any and all triggers that could come from your speech, including but not limited to, ableist slurs, orientation-shaming, cultural bigotry, the condoning of individual and/or institutional oppression, and prejudiced stereotypes about any given level of the hemospectrum.”

You blink rapidly.

“How… _the hell_  do you do that?” you wind up saying.

 “Do what?” Kankri asks.

“I literally have no idea what in the name of sweet taintchaifing fuck you’re talking about ninety eight percent of the time that you’re moving your mouth,” you answer.

He’s quiet again and it’s unnerving.

“Sorry, if that pressed any of your ‘triggers’ or whatever,” you continue, uneasy. “I didn’t even know that ‘triggers’ were a thing until I had the bulge-puncturing displeasure of finally meeting you.”

Kankri seems unfazed by your insults.

“I get the feeling that most people didn’t, or don’t,” he says. “Which is why I feel such a strong conviction to educate others and highly encourage them to check their privilege. Really society would be a much more decent place if we each went out of our ways to identify the ways in which we oppress one other as a species, and more often than not the most prominent forms of oppression are those which the oppressors themselves are blind to; again, by ‘blind’ I am not literally referring to ‘those who cannot see,’ and as previously mentioned I am fully aware of and am constantly checking my ablest privilege, but by that I am figuratively referring to the mindset of being so rigid and close-minded about one’s own undeserved and unearned rights that one becomes incapable of altering their views, of seeing others in society as their equals.”

This time when you’re silent it’s him who’s apologizing.

“Sorry,” he says. He sighs at himself and gazes downward almost self-consciously, kicking up a leg. “I’m rambling, and this is supposed to be about you.”

 _About you,_ he says.

You get an inkling from that that he may actually care about more than just hearing the sound of his own infuriating voice.

You lean forward, elbows to your knees. It’s quiet and still and you’re anxious. You still don’t know how to go about beginning to tell him your feelings.

Your mind starts cycling with thoughts about Terezi again. You shut your eyes and you start to see her. You see her perfect, gray little body, flushed teal and pressed flush into the scratched chest of someone else; you see her face, with bright red eyes and perfect, knife-like mouth, stained with drips and splatters of his blood. Indigo blood. Her nails are digging into his skin and her hands are gripping his long, black, tangled hair as she bounces up and down in his lap. You see Gamzee, you see the two of them abusing each other on top of the horn pile, and then you feel sick again, and you force your eyes open.

You hate feeling hurt and pathetic.

But Kankri did say that he was “all ears.”

You rarelyfind  _anyone_ who  _really_  wants to listen to you. Especially when it’s your crippling self-loathing who’s doing the talking. Kanaya’s busy with Rose now, Gamzee’s numb as a brick and he’d probably listen to anyone, and even your past and future selves are fucking revolted by the sight of your mopey, all-caps, gray blocks of text.

“It’s about Terezi,” you’re blurting all of a sudden.

Kankri nods besides you.

“Little Pyrope,” he acknowledges, smiling a little.

“And—about my moirail, Gamzee.”

“Little Makara?” he assumes.

“They’re together,” you reveal, staring out at the dark and resolutely  _not_  at him. “Caliginously together. And I really shouldn’t give two squirming fucks about whether or not they are, because she already has a matesprite, and all I am to Gamzee is his ‘motherfucking palebro’ who shoosh-papped him out of his insane, blood-splattering, murderous rampage—”

“Triggered.”

“ _What_?”

You look over. Kankri is tense all over and he’s holding his hand out towards you as if to protect himself. Of course you said something to set him off already, the hypersensitive fuck.

You want to swat his hand away so hard that it clocks him back in the face.

“’Insane’ is a disparaging and unconstructive term that should  _not_ be used fleetingly, or at all for that matter,” he corrects you in one of the most irritating tones you’ve ever heard, crossing his arms over himself, closing himself off to you. “Unless you are in a position that allows you to determine what universally constitutes as ‘sane,’ and you as a cismental psychologically-stable entity with all of your cognitive capacities are assuredly not, you have no right to try and define what kind of behavior is considered to be  _not-sane_.”

“No, you don’t understand,” you snap. “This clown  _literally_  rotted his thinkpan with Sopor Slime to the point that he couldn’t even function anymore, and then he started killing off all of our friends left and right one stone cold disturbing ‘honk’ at a fucking time, keeping their limbs and severed heads inside a goddamn thermal hull.”

“Oh.”

He uncrosses his arms and visibly relaxes, slouching.

“Sorry,” he says again. “I really didn’t mean to interrupt you. Please continue.”

You hesitate.

It’s like he flip flops back and forth between being a psychotic judgmental preachy rumpus asshole and a barely-there-but-somewhat decent person all within the course of a minute. Almost like he’s fighting between the two sides, at war with himself.

You suppose you can relate in a way. So you continue.

“I walked in on them, in a room on our meteor,” you grumble crossly. “They weren’t doing anything yet when I saw them but I could tell that I was—intruding. So I jumped back, and like a fucking retard—“

“Triggered.”

“—I waited there, and I listened. I listened for what I knew was gonna happen and I should’ve known better. I heard them, I heard  _her,_ and it—it hurt, because she wants him, and not me.”

It’s quiet again. Your heartbeat is racing something fierce.

“I used to think that I knew everything when it came to troll romance,” you ramble on. “I’ve seen every movie and re-read every adult novel. I’ve drawn full blown diagrams about quadrants, I could make a fucking career out of schooling everyone who ever lived on it, but when it comes to her, I just—“ you swallow, and your voice becomes shaky, “I  _suck._  I want her, but then I’m a dim-witted asshole wriggler who acts like I don’t want her, and nothing I do is good enough in her eyes anymore, no blind pun intended, and she always finds someone who can give her everything I can’t.”

Kankri is still listening.

“It’s like everyone who’s left in the entire universe, and news flash, there’s not a whole fucking lot, is more deserving of her than I am, and I just—I just wanted to be the one who made her whole. It’s what I’ve always wanted. She deserves to be happy and I wanted to make sure she always would be.”

You think about the last day you remember still having a chance with her. She wasn’t your matesprite and she wasn’t your kismesis, but she was your server player and she told you that you were adorable. She teased you about your “little moment,” one you’ll probably never forget, and you were too insecure to answer her heart with one back before she disconnected.

You don’t think she ever saw it.

“Anyway it doesn’t matter now,” you say, and for a while you forget that there’s even someone next to you. He feels invisible. It feels like you’re just talking to yourself. “I lost my chance. I told her that all I wanted was for her to be happy, and I guess she is with them, so I dug myself my the hole and now it’s time to bury myself in a filthy pile of my own immense stupidity, congratulations me, you worthless rucksack of ugly, you let go of the best girl you could’ve ever had, compare everyone you’ll ever meet to her and enjoy the rest of your miserable life.”

You’re seriously getting more and more embarrassing the more you talk like this. Past you is such a transparent weakling, and he keeps on spilling his guts to Kankri like a fat open wound.

“You’re an even more humiliating excuse for a troll than I am, but I don’t think even you would screw up things with a girl as badly as I did,” you say to your ancestor.

“Actually, Karkat, I’m worse off than you,” Kankri speaks up. “I don’t have any of my quadrants filled.”

You glance over.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

Weird.

He’s awful and all, and you don’t know how anyone could put up with his nonsensical blathering, but it’s not like he’s bad looking. You have two evils working against you, your shitty looks and your shitty personality, but at least he’s only got one of the two. And if he didn’t go about it sounding like such a prick all the time, you’d actually admit that he’s really smart, and that some of what he says about pacifying kind of makes sense.

And on top of all that he’s old. Well, old for a troll with your mutated off-the-spectrum blood, anyway. All this time, and he’s never,  _ever_ filled a quadrant? What’s wrong with him?

“Part of it is by my own autonomous choice,” he tells you. “I believe this is the first time I’m sharing this with you, Karkat, but a long time ago I swore to an oath of chastity. I’ve been keeping it up, strictly, ever since.”

You stare at him. “Why the hell would anybody choose to do that?” you ask.

He frowns. “I don’t appreciate you shaming my vows,” he sneers.

You roll your eyes as a sort of apology.

“Personally I feel that, excuse my word choice, and I apologize in advance if this triggers you, ‘pail filling’ is a rather extraneous and unnecessary aspect of troll culture, especially because I’m dead now I might add, and also because the decision to mate or not to mate by no means defines one’s existence as a member of the troll race, Beforan or Alternian, whichever one may be, and ‘pail filling’ is an unrealistic universal expectation of all trolls, especially for those who identify as aromantic, gray-aromantic, demiromatic, monoquadratic, monochromatic, and so on—”

_Oh my god, please stop talking._

“But another part of it entirely,” he finally gets to his point. “Another part of the reason that I’ve never filled any quadrants, is that I too once had—flushed feelings, of the unrequited nature. For a girl.”

“Who?” you demand.

He glances down and he starts kicking his legs again, nervous habit. You swear you can see a little bit of dusty red blush showing up on the cusp of his cheekbone.

“Pyrope,” he answers, and he’s smiling a little again.

You perk up at this.

You saw Pre-Scratch Terezi in passing last dream bubble. She looked a lot like Terezi, same red glasses, same dark hair, same wide, contagious grin, same tight-fitting, Redglare-cosplay-esque attire, and you personally thought she was  _sneaky hot_ like whoa holy fuck, but you never got a chance to talk to her.

From a distance you did hear her laugh, once. It warmed your heart because you hadn’t heard Terezi laugh in such a long time. And you still haven’t.

“Really?” you say to him.

“There had always been something between Latula and I,” Kankri explains. “A little bit of something. She’s the only one I can tolerate and consider myself ‘good friends’ with besides Porrim. I never let myself fall for her, though. But—that doesn’t mean I didn’t always secretly want to. Vow of chastity withstanding.”

This takes you by a surprise a little bit.

“Why didn’t you let yourself?” you ask.

Kankri sighs. “I knew that—loving her, would—complicate my priorities, and distract me from my other goals in life,” he admits. “I had what I suppose could be considered red feelings for her when I was much younger and more immature, but our relationship would have been problematic to say the least, because we’re such opposites. And then when she—entered a matespriteship with _Mituna_  after some time, all I could do was congratulate her from a distance. That’s what—‘good friends’ are supposed to do, you know.”

He sounds a little bitter, but somehow you end up not saying that.

“You’re already in love with her, aren’t you?” he asks you now, looking at you. “Your Pyrope?”

You nod quickly, feeling your heart sink, and you suddenly feel like curling in yourself. You love her like  _a fool_  and she doesn’t love you back anymore.

“Is all this unrequited red-rom bullshit, like—an irritating, transcending, shared Vantas-family trait or something?” you groan, shifting uncomfortably.

Kankri chuckles.

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s the most honest he’s ever sounded. “But I do know that my Post-Scratch self had a love that went beyond the four quadrants.”

You’re supposed to be the expert on this and that doesn’t even sound plausible to you.

But if it were real, you bet it’d be amazing.

“You’re meant to have a love like that too, Karkat,” Kankri says. “As you  _are_ the alternate universe version of him after all. I don’t know who it’ll be with, and perhaps it’ll be someone who you least expect, (trustmeIknowbecausewowMeulinreally), and I’m not one to preach to people about what they do and don’t deserve, but—you deserve that kind of love more than anyone I’ve ever known, I think. From what I can tell in the brief time I’ve gotten to know you.”

Wow. Maybe your ancestor really isn’t so bad after all.

He sure seems to like you. Quite a lot.

And here you’ve always thought that all versions of you, past, present, future, and alternate, were perpetually doomed to hate themselves.

Here he is proving you wrong.

If you thought you were blushing before then you had no idea, because you really are now.

“God, I don’t wanna go back,” you say to him now, faint.

He brushes his hand against yours a little bit, comfortingly, and you let him.

“I know.”

“Every time I see Strider, and I think about—what he does with her, it’s like a swift barbed punch to the gut,” you continue. “Like ‘oh hey guess who sucks more than a ruthless galaxy destroying fucking black hole? Surprise fuckwad, it’s you. And also you.’ And now it’s—it’s  _Gamzee,_ Kankri. My  _best friend_  is gonna be the one giving me that same feeling without even knowing it, and—I don’t know how long I can take being cooped up on that piece of useless floating rock anymore with any of them.”

“It’s not like you’re going to be there forever,” Kankri says.

You sigh.

“I just wanna black out and sleep on my book pile until it’s over.”

Kankri places his hand over your entirely, gives it a squeeze, and then runs his thumb up and down in soothing strokes.

You stare down at your skin contact and your breath hitches.

Then, almost as soon as he begins, he stands up.

You gaze up at him, worried. No no no, where is he going? You were just barely starting to like him there next to you, and who knows when the hell that feelings ever going to happen again.

“I enjoyed our discussion today, dancestor,” he tells you, dusting off his jeans, pulling his sleeves back down.

You stand up as well. The lump in your throat is thick, but somehow you’re able to mutter, “Me too.”

“I trust that as an eager student of mine, you’ll return to me soon,” Kankri says. “Though I’ve already given you my lectures about a variety of topics, including the many definitions of cis privilege, blood identities, quadrant orientations, the dangers of shaming, the life, times, and teachings of The Sufferer, and as of today our—mutual times of struggle and hardship in the romantic department—there are still a vast number of topics that have yet to be explored, and I will happily continue to be your explicative, detailed, and informative guide through each and every one as long as you give your consent to be the voyeur.”

Once again, you don’t have anything to say.

You watch Kankri as he walks upstairs. Your eyes trail after him and for just a split seconds your eyes find his hand. That hand was on yours, the hand that you let touch you, the hand that for a moment, you’d actually wanted to touch you.

“Oh, and next time,” Kankri says before he goes, “please come prepared with your full list of triggers for my convenience.”

You groan internally at his obnoxious persistence, and a second later you’re sitting up from your pile of books, thrust into the stiffness of the real world once again.

(♋)

The length of your rants in your feelings jams with Gamzee have drastically decreased, and have gotten much smaller and quieter as well, but he doesn’t seem to take notice.

Or, if he does, he doesn’t suspect the reason behind it. From what you can tell he still doesn’t know that you know.

It hurts you every day that you know, but you keep it to yourself. Every time you see Terezi and Dave building can towns with the mayor and biting each other’s lips, every time you see Terezi and Gamzee give each other a knowing glare each time they pass, you keep it to yourself. You repress, you ignore, you push past the pain.

You have no right to be upset. No right to be jealous. You have no right, no right, no right, no right. She’s not yours.

For some stupid sappy reason that thing Kankri said to you in the dream bubble keeps aimlessly tumbling itself around in your thinkpan. It doesn’t really help you feel any fucking better in the grand scheme of things because it’s so ambiguous and way-far-off in the future, but every once in a while as you toss and turn on your stack of books, wondering which of your next dream bubble visits is going to be to him, you think about it and it takes your mind off of things.

It reminds you that even though failing to be a leader and losing people you love in this game has been tough on you, on all of you, it’s not going to be everything you ever experience in your life.

Maybe you’ll actually have that beyond-the-four-quadrant love that he says you are  _meant to have._  Maybe it’ll be long after this, granted you make it out of this game with ominous green demons that thirst for your blood alive.

Maybe you won’t always feel the weight of your self-hatred blanketing over you so heavily, and maybe you can block the sounds of the horn pile squeaking over and over and over.

Maybe you can keep the nightmares out of your dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be a sequel to this.
> 
> Okay there will more than likely like 98% in the affirmative be a sequael to this, in which Kankri and Karkat do a little bit more of that comforting and a lot a bit more that touching~ tbc


End file.
